TO FIGHT CRIME, LEGALIZE IT

That's The Only Way We'll Beat The Gangs

Faced with the police on one side and organized crime on the other,
Canadians have no trouble telling the good guys from the bad. And when the
good guys say giving them new powers and more money will help them defeat
the bad guys, it sounds credible. Why not give the police what they want?

Unfortunately, when it comes to organized crime, nothing is simple. And
nothing could be more wrong than to assume more dollars, uniforms and guns
will solve anything.

International organized crime is growing in wealth and power even while, in
much of the West, most domestic crime is falling. The UN estimates organized
crime now rakes in $1 trillion US worldwide. As much as two per cent of the
GDP of developed countries may be lost to organized crime, and the
restrictions we place on free movement of people and goods to fight the
bandits mean further productivity losses.

Police forces worldwide have responded with demands for bigger budgets and
new powers, and for the most part they have got their wish. In 1998, G-8
leaders authorized more co-operative efforts, including an international
network of anti-money-laundering agencies. Member states also agreed to
expand domestic laws requiring banks to disclose "suspicious" financial
transactions.

In compliance with that agreement, the federal government has drafted
legislation that will require financial institutions to report certain
transactions. In effect, bank employees will become "a countrywide network
of spies and informers," as Alan Gold of the Canadian Criminal Lawyers'
Association put it.

This would be just the latest expansion of dangerous police powers: in the
last decade, we also expanded asset-forfeiture and anti-gang laws.

The problem with these measures - aside from their corrosion of civil
liberties - is they don't work. Combined with expanded police budgets, these
measures are capable of hurting specific criminals and rings, but they
cannot undermine organized crime as a whole.

Crackdowns Don't Work

We know this from American experience. In the late 1950s and 1960s, the
FBI - locked in a fight with Italian-American mafias - lobbied for and got
big boosts in its budget and new legislative weapons, including the
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Statue (RICO) and other laws
that abused civil liberties.

What did Americans get in exchange? The FBI did hammer the mafia: it's now
about one-quarter its former size. But that created a vacuum into which
rushed criminal gangs from the Far East, Latin America and Russia. These
gangs are more vicious and more successful than the old mafia. The net
damage done to American society by organized crime, far from being reduced,
has multiplied.

The police, of course, respond with requests for still more money and more
powers and in the last 20 years, American governments have given them just
about everything on their wish lists. Asset forfeiture was made so easy that
property could be seized without charges being laid - property-owners had to
go to court to prove they were not involved with drugs to get their
possessions back. Best of all from the enforcers' perspective, police were
allowed to keep what they seized. Results? Private-property rights were
undermined, police forces were corrupted, and illegal drugs flowed as
always. (After years of outrageous abuses, Congress recently moderated the
forfeiture laws.)

Despite this record of abject failure, the American model - more police
money, more police powers, more police officers - is becoming the
international model.

Strangely, the only crime-fighting policy not under serious consideration is
legalization: legalization of drugs, of prostitution, of gambling, and other
consensual crimes. The UN estimates $600 billion US of organized crime's
total take comes from selling illegal drugs, and much of the rest comes from
black markets created by bans on activity involving consensual adults,
particularly prostitution and gambling. Legalizing these markets would not
only bring them under government regulation, it would sap organized crime of
the vast majority of its income and power.

The irony is that legalization is the one and only drug policy Americans
have tried that did work. When did they do that? In 1933, when alcohol was
legalized.

Legalization Works

Legalization dramatically cut the harms that had been associated with
alcohol and even more dramatically weakened organized crime. Yet the G-8
today specifically rules out legalization because, as Britain's Tony Blair
argued, drugs are "strongly linked" with "wider international and domestic
crime." So was alcohol during Prohibition, but politicians aren't making
that connection because their law-enforcement officials aren't pointing it
out.

As the buzz-phrase puts it, we need to think outside the box in fighting
organized crime. Police may be the good guys, but they aren't likely to push
solutions other than more resources. The fight against organized crime must
be open to ideas that go beyond dollars, uniforms and guns.